BEWARE OF FAKE MUSLIMS ESPECIALLY IN THE WEST: THEY ARE SPYING ON YOU!
by Syarif Hidayat*
Islam is a beautiful religion, full of wisdom and harmony. Islam is a religion of love and peace. Love is one of the noblest human principles and traits that cultivate the spirit of interaction, solidarity, and cooperation and add affection to human relationships and dealings. All heavenly and manmade religions cherish love in its top-down (God-creation), bottom-up (creation-God), and horizontal (interpersonal) dimensions.
We believe that Islam is the origin of true love in all its dimensions (top-down, bottom-up, and horizontal) and forms, quite independent of any other faith, except inasmuch as both come from the same source, as established by historians. Many Qur’anic texts and Prophetic hadiths undeniably prove the fact that love, in the broadest sense, is an intrinsic ideal of Islam.
Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali said, “Love of Allah is the highest spiritual attainment. Whatever follows it is an outcome of it (such as passion, communion, fulfillment, etc.), and whatever precedes it is a step towards it”. Allah says, {Say (O Muhammad), “If you really love Allah, then follow me, and Allah will love you”}. He also says, {A people whom He will love and who will love Him}. And He says, {But those who have believed love Allah more (than anything else)}. All such verses show the merit of love and tell that it has degrees.
In several hadiths, the Prophet established love as a prerequisite to religiosity. Allah says, {And among people are some who would take (i.e., associate) besides Allah rivals (to Him) whom they love as much as they love Allah. But those who have believed love Allah most}. Ibn Jazi Al-Kalbi wrote, “There are two types of love: imitation love and hearty love. To me, the latter is indicated in the second Verse, while the former is indicated in the first Verse”.
Heartfelt love is the greatest of loves. It brings forth ultimate satisfaction and happiness. A Companion once told the Prophet, “I have not prepared for it (i.e., the Hereafter) much Prayer or fasting, but I love Allah and His Messenger”. The Prophet said, “One will (in the Hereafter) be in the company of those he loves”. Anas commented, “I have never seen Muslims delight at something, except for conversion to Islam, more than they did at hearing this”.
Abu Ruzayn Al-`Uqayli asked, “O Messenger of Allah! What is faith?” The Prophet replied, “It is to love Allah and His Messenger more than everything else”. The Prophet also said, “None of you shall truly believe unless when Allah and His Messenger are more loved to him than everything else”. And he said, “No servant of Allah shall truly believe unless when I become more beloved to him than his family, property, and all people”. Another narration adds, “… and his own self”.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) strongly urged for love. He said, “Love Allah for the graces He bestows upon you, and love me for Allah’s love for me”. An authentic hadith tells us that, while receiving the Shar`i penalty for being drunken, an alcoholic was cursed by a Companion.
The Prophet blamed the curser, saying, “He (i.e., the penalized man) loves Allah and His Messenger”. Noticeably, though addicted to a sinful practice, the man still had something positive to commend: love. The deeper that love grows, the more deserved forgiveness becomes. A poet said, Indeed, my love for Umamah is not one that can be changed by tale-bearing or passage of time
If this is true with romantic love, it will for sure be more applicable to love of Allah, the Sovereign, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, Who has granted us His Graces, originated us with His Wisdom, provided for us with His Generosity, and run our affairs with His Kindness. It pleases Him when a servant repents and returns to His Obedience, as pointed out in an authentic hadith. Allah says, {Indeed, Allah loves those who are constantly repentant and loves those who are self-purifying}.
Horizontal Love
Mutual love among people is a basic notion in Islam, based on human fraternity. The Prophet said, “None of you shall truly believe unless when he loves for his brother what he loves for himself”. That hadith associates fraternity with love: “Brother” here means a fellow human, as interpreted by several hadith commentators, such as Ibn Rajab (Hanbali), An-Nawawi (Shafi`i), and Ash-Shabrakhiti (Malik).
Also, there is “charity” — unlimited loving-kindness toward all others. The Prophet (peace be upon him) prayed, “Oh Allah! I ask you for (the ability to do) good deeds… and love for the poor”. In a Hadith Qudsi, Allah says, “And My servant will keep drawing closer to me by offering supererogatory acts of worship until I love him”.
Love goes beyond living beings to include even nonliving things, nature, as well as good words and deeds. The Prophet described Mount Uhud saying, “This is a mount that loves us and is loved by us”. He further said, “Allah is Beautiful, and He loves beauty”. Allah loves to make things easy for people. The Prophet said, “Verily, Allah loves that His Exceptional Permissions be implemented”. Allah says, {And He (i.e., Allah) loves good-doers}.
As early as his second speech after arrival at Medina, the Prophet focused on love, as documented by Ibn Ishaq. He said, “Love what Allah loves. Love Allah from the bottom of your hearts. Do not become weary of reciting Allah’s Words and extolments… Love one another with the spirit inspired by Allah among you. Verily, it angers Allah when His Covenant is broken. And peace be with you”.
Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali said, “Let you know that the happiest of people in the Hereafter are those who love Allah most, because they will win the pleasure of meeting Him. The most blissful moment ever for a lover is when he meets his beloved after many years of longing, knowing that they will be together forever, without disturbance, restriction, or fear of separation.
The pleasure depends on the degree of love: The stronger love is, the greater joy will be felt. Love of Allah is acquired in life and is found in every believer, because it comes from knowledge of Allah. However, when love grows so overwhelming that it turns into some sort of infatuation or extravagant passion, this elevated status is not found in most people”.
Love is a human value. Everyone likes to be loved; hardly can there be someone who finds it ok to be hated by others. Someone can clash with others because they do not love him. He is reacting the wrong way; if love is shown by both sides, there will remain no hostility.
Love involves feelings and behavior; it should be manifested in word and deed. The Prophet said, “When one of you loves his brother, let him inform him of this”. Why is love a value? Because it is seen as good by everyone, even those who do not have it. This is the criterion for value.
Philosophers used various terms to refer to inner pleasure, such as “love of fate”, a term used by Nietzsche to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss, as good. Moreover, it is characterized by an acceptance of the events or situations that occur in one’s life.
Another example is “intellectual love of God”, a concept put forward by Spinoza to describe the highest good with which we attain “our salvation and blessedness and freedom”. It originates from God’s eternal and infinite essence. It is, then, simply one particular mode of God’s attribute. Intellectual love is also one part of God’s love for himself. This does not mean that intellectual love is eternal, but it signifies that essence of the human mind can be explained in the light of God’s eternity.
War on Terror is War on Islam
Unfortunately more and more often, Islam has been associated with terrorism and violence due to the actions by the enemies of Islam individually and institutionally who have always been trying and continue to try to ruin the good image of Islam and Muslims including through the so-called “War on Terror” that was launched by the US under GW Bush administration.
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. More than 1.400 years ago, the God Almighty Allah SWT warned Muslims: “Never will the Jews nor the Christians be pleased with you (O Muhammad Peace be upon him ) till you follow their religion. Say: “Verily, the Guidance of Allâh (i.e. Islâmic Monotheism) that is the (only) Guidance. And if you (O Muhammad Peace be upon him ) were to follow their (Jews and Christians) desires after what you have received of Knowledge (i.e. Al Qur’ân), then you would have against Allâh neither any Walî (protector or guardian) nor any helper.” (Al Qur’an, Surah Al-Baqara,Verse: 120)
War against Islam, War on Islam or Attack on Islam, is a coined term to describe a perceived campaign to harm, weaken or annihilate the societal system of Islam, using military, economic, social and cultural means. The campaign is alleged to be waged by non-Muslims and false Muslims.
The alleged perpetrators of the war include Western powers (especially the United States with its “war on Terror”), pro-Western Muslim states, and non-Western, non-Muslim states such as Serbia (Genocide in Bosnia), Russia (for its actions in Chechnya and the Caucasus in general), and India (for the conflict in Kashmir) as well as Myanmar (Rohingya Muslim Genocide in Arakan).
The global war on terror has become a thinly veiled excuse to wage a global war on Islam with increased arrests of Muslims, calls for regime change in Muslim countries and racial profiling, according to a leader with a national Islamic organization.
“The tactic of terrorism—and yes it is a tactic, not an ideology—has been deployed by a multitude of groups of different religions, ethnicities and ideologies and yet the Islamic faith, unlike any other, is erroneously and incessantly associated with terrorism,” said Dr. Parvez Ahmed, a national board member of the Council on American Islamic Relations. “The association of a faith practiced by 1.2 billion people worldwide to terrorism creates the perception that the George W. Bush War on Terror (GWOT) is a war against Islam.”
‘Fake’ Muslims
Revelations that a Danish Muslim convert was in reality an undercover agent posing as extremist in an attempt to trap young Muslims are sending shockwaves across the sizable minority in Denmark. “The police and security services want us to trust them but they are sending agitators into our community to lead people astray,” Qadir Baksh, chairman of the Luton Islamic Center in Bury Park Road, told Luton Today newspaper on Wednesday, October 10.
A Muslim convert, Morten Storm, has unveiled that he was an undercover agent for the Danish intelligence service (PET) and the CIA.
He told Jyllands-Posten daily that he was recruited by PET in 2006 to track down extremists in the Scandinavian country. He also said that he led the CIA to Al-Qaeda leader in Yemen Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone attack last year.
The convert moved to Luton in 1999, where he told community leaders that he wanted to start a new life after a history of extremism. However, he started to propagate his radical ideas in an effort to lure young Muslims into his line. “Certain people here propped him up, such as Al Muhajiroun,” Baksh said, referring to an outlawed Islamist group in Britain, which has an office in Denmark.
“They made him their scholar.” The Muslim leader said that the undercover had tried hard to spread his radical ideas in the Muslim community. “He tried very hard to spread mischief in the community,” he said. “He would come to us and tell us his views, and we would send him away with his tail between his legs.”
Peaceful Muslims
Baksh said the radical ideas championed by the undercover largely fell on the deaf ears of most Danish Muslims. “He was running around here, there and everywhere, with a corrupt version of Islam, and leading people astray,” he said. “There are extremist jihadists in Luton and he was propagating their thoughts among young people, spreading lies about Islam.
“We thought he was probably being watched by the security services.”
The Muslim leader said that the behavior of the convert had raised suspicions in the community. “Early on I had my suspicions about him, but I didn’t have clear evidence,” Baksh said. “We know the CIA do conduct sting operations.”
The CIA and FBI are used to use fake operations to trap what they say “potential terror” suspects. But the technique has sparked anger among US Muslims, who accuse the two agencies of trapping young Muslims into terrorism. In 2009, Muslim groups had threatened to suspend all contacts with the FBI over its tactics of sending informants into mosques to trap worshippers.
“The vast majority of Muslims just want to get on with their lives and practise their religion in peace,” Baksh said. Denmark is home to a Muslim minority of 200,000, making three percent of the country’s 5.4 million population. The Scandinavian country was the focus of Muslim anger in 2005 after a newspaper published cartoons lampooning Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him).
Following the cartoons crisis, Muslims worldwide took many initiatives to remove widely circulated stereotypes about Islam in the West.
Danish Muslims established the European Committee for Honoring the Prophet, a grouping of 27 Danish Muslim organizations, to raise awareness about the merits and characteristics of the Prophet.
US Muslims Haunted by Mosque Infiltration
The Muslim community in Southern California is still seething with a sense of betrayal years after the FBI had instilled in their mosque an undercover informant to help the intelligence agency face what officials called Islam “threat” to the US national security.
“The community feels betrayed,” Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, an umbrella group of more than 75 mosques, told the Washington Post.
As the uproar over the FBI’s attempts to trap US Muslims into plots continues, Muslims in Southern California still bitterly recall how the FBI agents in early 2006 instructed an informant to infiltrate their mosques in quest for potential extremists.
The FBI provided the informant, a convicted forger named Craig Monteilh, the undercover name Farouk al-Aziz, a French Syrian, with code name “Oracle.”
“They got a guy, a bona fide criminal, and obviously trained him and sent him to infiltrate mosques,” Syed said. Working out his way, Monteilh, a non-Muslim, chose the Islamic Center of Irvin, close to his house, where he pretended to took shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, before worshipers.
To the surprise of Muslims at the mosque, he replaced his western clothes, in only 10 months, with a robe, a white skullcap and sandals.
“We started hearing that he was saying weird things,” said Omar Kurdi, a Loyola Law School student who knew Monteilh from the mosque and gym. “He would walk up to one of my friends and say, ‘It’s good that you guys are getting ready for the jihad.’ “
But Monteilh’s mission as an informant backfired as the mosque community had felt uneasy with the informant’s attitude and rhetoric.
Muslims informed the FBI that Farouk was urging Muslim youth to take part in attacks.
“They said Farouk had told them he had access to weapons and that they should blow up a mall,” Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said.
Moreover, the mosque went to Orange County Superior Court in June 2007 and obtained a restraining order against Monteilh. “They were convinced this man was a terrorist.”
Islam Threat
Monteilh’s infiltration backfired after the ties soured between the FBI and their spy. “When things went sour, they ditched him and he got mad,” says Syed. “It’s like a soap opera, for God’s sake.”
Monteilh has even gone public, suing the FBI, revealing their secret methods and charging that his “handlers” trained him to entrap Muslims and infiltrate their mosques, homes and businesses.
“She asked if I wanted to infiltrate mosques,” he told the Post, recalling first time an official from the FBI asked him to target Muslims. In a later session, Monteilh said, the FBI agent told him that “Islam is a threat to our national security.”
He was asked to report on a daily basis on the slightest details concerning the mosque congregation, including who opens the mosque for the fajr (dawn) prayer.
They even asked him to date Muslim women if it gained him intelligence. The informant even helped build a terrorism-related case against Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, an Afghan-born Arabic-language instructor, who was accused of planning a terror attack.
The Justice Department recently took the extraordinary step of dropping charges against Niazi, who Monteilh had caught on tape agreeing to blow up buildings, law enforcement officials said.
FBI officials, however, deny Monteilh’s story, and say that the case does not represent their relations with Muslim community, praised as a reliable source for critical information.
They further confirmed infiltration cases only in case of having evidence of crime, denying reports of targeting people based on religion or ethnicity.
“[FBI agents may] conduct an activity that might somehow involve surveillance in and about a mosque,” said Steven Martinez, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.
Monteilh’s case is not the first to reveal the FBI tactic of sending informants into mosques. Last year, Muslim groups threatened to suspend all contacts with the FBI over sending informants into mosques.
US Muslims are particularly wary of the FBI’s history of targeting members of their community. Since 9/11, Muslims, estimated between six to seven million, have become sensitized to an erosion of their civil rights, with a prevailing belief that America was stigmatizing their faith.
“The FBI wants to treat the Muslim community as a partner while investigating us behind our backs,” said Kurdi, the Loyola student.
“They can’t have it both ways.”
Undercover Police Anger British Muslims
Meanwhile, British Muslims are angry over Greater Manchester police tactics of sending informants into mosques to spy on worshippers, warning that the move risks sewing mistrust between the religious minority and security agencies.
“It’s alarming, you’ve got one community that is being targeted,” Yasmin Dar, a member of the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Mosques and Community Forum, told the BBC.
“I’ve not heard of any cases of undercover officers going into churches or synagogues, so why a particular faith? Relations with the police have hit rock bottom. “It’s created a lot of mistrust with the police.”
Relations between the Muslim and police were strained following an investigation by the North West Counter Terrorism Unit in which officers posed as Muslims inside mosques. The police informants attended prayer meetings and services at a dozen mosques in Manchester.
During such visits, they befriended four Muslim men for more than a year after which three of the men, Munir Farooqi, 54, Israr Malik, 24, and Matthew Newton, 29, were convicted of terrorism charges in September. Another man was acquitted.
The court heard Farooqi had tried to recruit the undercover policemen to go to Afghanistan to fight British soldiers. Farooqi was given four life sentences, Newton was jailed for six years and Malik was given an indeterminate sentence and told he would serve at least five years.
Moreover, the police decided to confiscate the home where Farooqi’s family live, leading to all 15 members of the Mosques and Community Forum walking out of a meeting with the police earlier this month.
At the meeting they had called on the Chief Constable Peter Fahy to reconsider the decision to apply to court for a forfeiture order. Facing British mistrust, Britain’s two million Muslims have taken full brunt of anti-terror laws since the 7/7 attacks.
They have repeatedly complained of maltreatment by police for no apparent reason other than being Muslim. A Financial Times opinion poll has showed recently that Britain is the most suspicious nation about Muslims.
Society Scar
The covert nature of the operation has led to tensions between Greater Manchester Police and its Islamic advisory group. “Mosques are a special place for Muslims and when people were told that this had happened they just felt betrayed,” Rabnawaz Akbar, another Forum member, said.
“It’s left a scar on the good relations that had been built over the years.”
Imam Habib-ur-Rehman, the imam of the Madina Mosque in Levenshulme, says that he feels insulted by the fact that non-Muslims pretended to be part of the faith.
Members of the Islamic communities were angered when they heard that police officers had posed as Muslims, he said. “We will never welcome such people who record our messages secretly, not such undercover activities, definitely not. We will never support them,” the imam said.
“We were disappointed and angry but at the same time we remained peaceful, we tried to remain law abiding – an angry person can do anything.”
The Muslim Safety Forum (MSF) represents more than 30 Islamic organizations including the Muslim Council of Britain, Muslim Parliament, Federation of Student Islamic Societies, and mosques.
It offers advice to the Metropolitan Police and Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) on Islamic issues. Its counter terrorism spokesman Shamiul Joarder argues Muslims are already taking the lead in the fight against extremism.
“We’ve seen it through Finsbury Park Mosque – it was the Muslims who took out Abu Hamza.” He says the authorities need the support of the Muslim community in order to counter terrorist activity effectively.
“The police haven’t managed to foster positive relationships with the Muslim community, otherwise they could use these channels to get the information they need. “This kind of infiltration is not the way forward.”
(T/E1/P03)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
*Editor of MINA (He can be contacted via email: [email protected])
This article (a more comprehensive version) has also been published in the websites: UNDERSTANDING ISLAM
and GLOBAL MARCH FOR PEACE!
Bibliotheque:
- http://www.israinternational.com/
- http://www.finalcall.com/
- http://forevermuslim.wordpress.com/
- http://www.onislam.net/
